RUSH: “Dear Rush…” This is an e-mail I just got. E-mails are running the gamut, folks. Today I don’t have the slightest idea what I’m doing, according to the e-mails. No matter what I say, I don’t know what I’m doing. Here’s a sample: “You have spent the past two days making fun of, diminishing, belittling, trashing all the things at the convention. I hate the RINOs only a little less than the Democrats, but last night was a delightful show of all the things you’ve been talking about for 22 years.
“It was all about conservatism, individualism, free markets, marriage, equal opportunity for everyone. Even immigrants. Especially immigrants! Is it perfect? No. But they made a great effort last night. It’s painful to listen to you trash it. They were giving a summation of your 24 years on the radio last night. I thought that the whole thing, every time I heard someone speak, ‘This person listens to Rush. That person listens to Rush.’ And I’m shocked and stunned to hear you making fun of it.”
Plus, there are e-mails on the other side. “You keep going, buddy! This is exactly right. Somebody’s gotta speak truth to power.” It’s all over, the reaction. There’s no one take. It’s a good thing I have a steel spine or I would be one of these schizo swing voters. Anyway, what I was gonna say before the top-of-the-hour break about Governor Christie is people, I think, judge some of these speeches on expectations. And the expectations of Chris Christie were no-holds-barred.
“This guy’s gonna drop the hammer; it’s gonna be great.” Then word leaked out:
“No, it’s not. He’s gonna spend a lot of time talking about himself as a Republican governor of New Jersey and how he straightened things out there. It’s gonna be an autobiographical speech.” I heard that preview and I thought, “Oh, that’s interesting.” You know, it’s fascinating. This 31%, this statistic. Thirty-one percent of people who watch TV don’t watch TV. They don’t get their TV from a TV set.
They get it from Hulu, from YouTube, from video, Facebook, Twitter. What they get, what they watch, are highlights. So in the case of Governor Christie, a lot of people who were really looking forward to Christie last night have seen what? They’ve gotten to know the Chris Christie at town hall meetings or the Chris Christie responding to media people. You know, hammering these guys, which everybody loves.
So the expectations that a lot of people had for Christie’s speech last night obviously were unrealized or unmet. I got up today and Byron York has a piece: “Why Ann Romney’s Speech Worked and Why Chris Christie’s Didn’t.” So the analysis of this is all over the ballpark. They have questions about how to respond. Okay, you do have Obama out calling Romney a murderer, essentially. His campaign’s calling Romney a felon. Romney hates dogs. You know, that commercial with Romney’s dog on the roof of the car and so forth.
Now, there are those who believe — and I want to ask you about this. There are those who believe that the way you respond to that, the way you respond to people who are accusing you of being inhumane or being cold-hearted… “You hate the poor!” The way to respond to this is simply show up and have your family around you, and speak without profanity, and it will expose the accusers as the liars they are. That is an ongoing theory. I just heard that theory proposed by a learned wise man on Fox, and it does sound good.
It does sound good. In a fair world, that’s exactly the way it would work. Let’s take Romney and Obama. On the one hand, we have Obama essentially calling Romney a murderer. We have the allegation that he might be a felon and the business about the dog. These just scratch the surface. The attempts here to make people hate Romney based on ads that the Obama people have run — over a hundred million dollars in ads.
The way to respond to it is show up at your convention and have your wife go out and make a speech and be lovable and normal, and have the kids there looking normal, and have as many normal people as you can. Speak about love, devotion, flag, and family, and you win because you’re obviously not a murderer. You’re obviously not. You don’t have to do anything to respond to it other than show up. (sigh) If only that worked. I’ve had trust and faith that that would work for me. I’ve had it said…
And I hate to make this personal, I really do, but it may help illustrate here. Without specifying instances, many of you have been around here for years. You know of the various attempts that have been made to portray me in various inhumane, mean-spirited, racist, sexist, thuggish ways. I come in here every day, and I do what I do, and I’m none of that. Has it changed any of those people’s minds? No. In fact, they don’t care to have their minds changed.
They’re gonna make the allegation regardless the truth, particularly the Obama people when they got nothing else to rely on. They can’t talk about themselves positively. They can’t. What they’ve done is so bad, they can’t lie about it. They can’t portray this economy as roaring. They can’t portray the recovery as happening. They can’t portray the country as on the right track. They can’t lie about anything. So all they can do is level these accusations.
George W. Bush. For, let’s just say, six years the media and the Democrat Party set out to destroy George Bush. After six years, George Bush’s approval numbers were in the thirties. George W. Bush was not even close to anything he was accused of being or doing. George W. Bush was on television every day. The theory is that just being human, just being who he is — just going on television, being president, being well spoken, all these things — that alone is all you have to do, and you beat ’em.
Did it work?
Did they keep Bush’s numbers out of the thirties?
Were the Democrats unsuccessful? It took ’em six years. But they convinced, in six years, the people of this country that we were in a recession when we weren’t, that we were losing the Iraq war when we weren’t. They lied about Petraeus, the surge, Afghanistan, all of this. You name it. They were lying about the economy; they were lying about unemployment. They were lying about inflation.
They were trying to make everybody in the world think Bush didn’t care about them. Hurricane Katrina? Bush didn’t care! They had the picture of him in Air Force One flying over New Orleans. You tell me it didn’t work. Somebody try to tell me that Bush’s crafted strategy of not replying, a crafted strategy of not responding, triumphed. Tell me it worked. How can it be said to have worked when they succeeded in getting his approval numbers down to the thirties?
They were so happy, Wolf Blitzer spent two hours reporting it! We have played for you the montage. Now, in what we would all like to believe is a fair and just and sane world, accusing somebody of killing another man’s wife wouldn’t last five seconds. And yet it remains something the Romney people think they’ve gotta deal with! The same thing about Romney doesn’t care about the poor. The same thing with the War on Women.
They believe they have to counter that, which was a large portion of the purpose of last night’s convention. Woman after woman after woman after woman came up to podium. And I loved it. And I thought it was great. Nikki Haley was awesome last night. She gave a fabulous speech. (Nobody saw it because it was prior to primetime and was nowhere near the networks.) Artur Davis was over-the-top fabulous, and he did ream Obama. I don’t mean to be leaving anybody out.
We’ve got sound bites. Mia Love was just fabulous! It was superb. I’m only discussing this notion of how you deal with this because for 24 years, you know people call here, “Rush, why don’t the Republicans, or why do the Republicans, or why aren’t the Republicans?” I don’t know. I never have known. But I did hear just 20 minutes ago that the way to deal with this stuff is show up and have your family there and the dog and speak about the flag and be normal, wonderful Americans, and you win. And maybe in this case they did. I hope so. Don’t misunderstand. I just know that in real life, in the case of George W. Bush, for example, it didn’t work. And arguably, it still hasn’t. How else can Obama get away with blaming Bush?
We’ve seen the polling data. It’s in the forties. Maybe close to 50% still think that Bush is the architect of this problem. Poor old Obama just inherited a big mess. It’s unusually high, the number of people that believe that, even after three years. The decision has been made not to try to counter any of that. You boil this down, it seems like at every turn, whoever the Republicans of prominence of the day happen to be, because of all this they have to go out of their way to prove themselves normal, when they already are. They already are normal. They’re average. They’re harmless. They’re none of what they are alleged to be. And the party of abnormal and the party of genuine mean-spirited extremism gets away with making these allegations, and they are never on the defensive about any of it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Hey, folks, a quick question. If you are for the rich, does it mean you are against the poor? No, seriously, does it? And when the Democrats make this allegation, Romney, he only cares for the rich. Oh, it means he actively is against the poor? That’s what they want you to believe. Let me ask you a very simple question. The poor are helped by what? Money. The poor, by definition, don’t have their own, right? So, when the poor are assisted, where do they get the money? Obama’s stash is right. But where does Obama get the money? Our stash. The point is, that the poor would have nothing if it weren’t for the rich charity, and the rich are charitable out the wazoo, particularly in this country, middle class, too. This is so cockeyed and convoluted.
Why is it a crime to defend the rich? I mean, after all, they’re citizens, too. They’ve worked hard. Why is it that everybody thinks they have a claim on everything the rich have? This is the perversion that the Democrat Party, the American left, liberalism, has visited upon our culture and our country, and it’s sickening, and it is pathetic. The rich are Americans, too. “Rush, you really stepped in it now, defending the rich. That’s really gonna help the Republicans. That’s right, Rush, you may as well just sign up as a Democrat.” You can’t win.
By the way, according to the latest ABC News poll, ABC News/Washington Post poll, released two days ago. Ready for this? Now, it did oversample Democrats by 7%, but according to the latest ABC News poll, people still blame George Bush for the economy by 52 to 34%. Two days ago. ABC News/Washington Post. Yeah, Democrats oversampled by 7%. Okay, so take all seven out, you still have 45 to 34 blame Bush for the economy. There hasn’t been any pushback on that by Bush or his team.
This is Amanda in Orlando. Hi, Amanda, I’m glad you called. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s an honor.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: I have to say, normally I agree with you probably 99.9% of the time, but I think I disagree with you when discussing the speeches. I think what they did, for me, anyway —
RUSH: Wait, wait, what did I say you’re disagreeing with?
CALLER: Well, when you were saying that everyone was expecting Chris Christie to go in there and really just lay down the hammer and just sort of stand up for themselves and point out things that are wrong with the administration and, you know, specific examples instead of being, you know, love and compassion —
RUSH: Maybe I wasn’t clear. The people who were excited to hear Chris Christie I think had those expectations, and I prefaced it by saying a lot of people only know Christie by these little YouTube clips where he’s battling little jerks from the media or jerks from the Democrats in the New Jersey legislature, where he hammers ’em and slams ’em and takes no prisoners.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: I do think there was a segment of the crowd that thought that’s what they were gonna get.
CALLER: Well, I was one of those that was very excited to see Chris Christie speak. And I do love when he takes down Joe Heckler in the town hall. I think what they did last night, though, very effectively was, I feel that they somewhat, which I think hasn’t been done in quite a long time, was I think they were able to frame the campaign a little bit. And normally I feel like we’re always on the defensive and I feel like the Democrats always throw it out there, they lay the gauntlet down, and then we’re always scrambling to defend, defend, defend. And I think, by what they spoke of last night, it was very classy, it was kind of at the top of the game, and they were able to frame it such that, when the DNC goes into convention next week, instead of being able to just sort of answer tit-for-tat, like, you know, yesterday, last week at the Republican convention they said X, Y, and Z, but we know blah, blah, blah. I think that now the DNC doesn’t have anything to stand on for the last four years they’ve been in office, they’ve done nothing. And I think that we didn’t give them anything where they can just stand around and answer back to our accusations. They’re gonna have a hard time talking about some things next week.
RUSH: Amanda, you know I love you, right?
CALLER: (laughing) Back at you, Rush.
RUSH: I do want to react to that. I’ve got a mere 15 busy broadcast seconds remaining, not enough time for me. Normally I could do it, but I want to spend a little bit more time than that, so can you hang on through the break, because you’ve mentioned an interesting premise here, and I’d like to react to it. Can you hang on through the break? ‘Cause it’s three and a half minutes or so.
CALLER: I will. And if I get disconnected, I will call you back.
RUSH: Good luck with that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We return now to Amanda in Orlando, Florida. What you said is fascinating to me.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: No, no, no. Please. I’m not being critical. I’m as open to suggestions, interpretations of last night as anybody.
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: We’re in uncharted ground here as far as I’m concerned. This convention’s unlike any other to me, going into it, and after one day of it, this is new territory for me.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Can’t explain why. Don’t know. I mean, I haven’t gotten deep enough into myself to get in touch, but it just feels different. Now, you said that what you liked last night about not being specific about Christie not dropping the hammer as he’s known to be able to do —
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: — is that, as a result of that, Democrats don’t have anything to aim at their convention next week?
CALLER: Well, of course not. Let me rephrase. Not that they don’t have anything because they’ll do what they do best, which is —
RUSH: Well, but my point about that is that you’re making that assessment within the realm of what you and I consider to be the truth. They don’t live there. Listen to this. This is from a New York Times editorial today. “The genius of Mrs. RomneyÂ’s diva performance was the way she smiled so warmly as she delicately slipped the knife into President Obama.” Now, you saw Ann Romney. She didn’t have a knife last night. She didn’t stick a knife into anybody. She didn’t twist a knife into anybody. I’ll tell you what I think she did do.
I think she stared Barack Obama right in the eyes and said, “You’re toast, buddy.” I think that’s what she did. And I think they’re scared to death. But that doesn’t mean that when they get to their convention next week, they’re not gonna just tell the same old lies about Romney and Mrs. Romney and Christie. In other words, I have learned, Amanda, there is nothing we can do to stop them from characterizing us the way they do or saying what they’re going to say. We can’t. And so it’s pointless to be defensive about it, to me.
CALLER: I agree with you, but I also think what they did, I think what Ann Romney did very fantastically last night was she’s almost as rich as God, yet you really felt like you could identify with her and you connected with her. I felt like I could sit down and have a cup of coffee with her or a tuna fish sandwich and she would be like, you know, my Mrs. Smith neighbor next door, and I don’t think the Democrats are counting on that. They try to paint them as out of touch and you can’t connect with them and, you know, how could she possibly connect or reverberate within the single mom community. And I thought, you know what, I thought in that sense she knocked it out of the park last night.
RUSH: I thought she did, too. I agree with all that. Now, what about Juan Williams’ reaction? “Ah, she just came off as a ‘corporate wife.'” Did you hear about that?
CALLER: Consider the source?
RUSH: Well, yeah, I think he is trying to get hired by PBS again, NPR, whatever. But do you know what that means? For Juan Williams to, “Ah, she came off as a corporate wife,” do you know what that means? That means kept woman. It means a woman who doesn’t do diddly-squat. She’s a trophy wife and her husband’s off being corporate CEO taking care of her. She’s going to Tiffany. She’s doing all this other stuff during the day. She’s got a cushy life. That’s what Juan Williams said.
CALLER: — sitting next to Keith Olbermann very soon.
RUSH: No, that’s not my point. You said they didn’t get any ammo, and I’m telling you they don’t need it. They make it up.
CALLER: Well, I think — yes, they will get ammo from —
RUSH: So I’m saying, could we fire both barrels? That’s all I’m saying. We don’t gain anything pussy-footing around.
CALLER: I think what the GOP did last night was made it a little bit harder for them to make it so easy to use that ammo. I think there are gonna be a few more people scratching their heads when they try to bring that ammo out that will say, you know what, I’m not so sure that that’s really right. I’m not so sure that I buy that.
RUSH: Well, I don’t think they’re universally believed. I don’t think they always get away with it.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Don’t misunderstand. We got tons of ammo ourselves.
CALLER: Yes, we do. And we have all the way to November to start using it.
RUSH: And the added benefit of our ammo is that it is the truth.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: But see, nobody’s gonna question them if we don’t. The DNC is not. The media’s not gonna question ’em. Nobody’s gonna hold them accountable to anything they say. If we don’t, who will?
CALLER: Well, I’m hopeful that the more time we have between now and November, the more we will start doing that and —
RUSH: Well, here’s another thing. Just to offer you some comforting resolve. I think that this convention is taking place in a bubble. I think when it’s over, I think you’re gonna see Romney — don’t forget now, now the convention’s here, Romney now can start spending the money —
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: — that he has raised, and I think you’re gonna see all kinds of fur flying in the Romney super PAC ads, in the Romney ads. Romney’s already running a lot of effective reply ads, if you will, or even attack ads against Obama. I think they’re working. And I think you’re gonna see more of that. The convention itself probably is a little bit of a bubble in that regard. But don’t forget, now, Amanda, in 2008 we weren’t allowed to say Obama’s middle name. We couldn’t say Barack Hussein Obama. This time we’re not supposed to say his first name or his last name, either, is one way of interpreting this. And this is considered to be a positive. This is helpful. Our consultants are telling us, yep, this is the way to go about this. They’re the professionals. They’re the ones who earn their living doing this, so who am I, El Rushbo, to question it? Ahem. Anyway, Amanda, I appreciate the call, I really do.
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